WORLD CRISIS
God reads our thoughts to us and
comments:
Leaders
Isaiah 47:10 And you thought to
yourself,
"I am and there is none but me."
Evil is coming upon you
Which you will not know how to charm away;
Disaster is falling upon you
Which you will not be able to appease;
Coming upon you suddenly
Is ruin of which you know nothing.
Isaiah is speaking about Babylon
and its upcoming conquest by Cyrus of Persia. But ends of ages are similar.
Perhaps this verse will also pertain to our own upcoming "world
crisis."
Secularism
The father of secularism was the
narrow minded and godless attitude of . . . atheistic science. Secularism had
its inception as a rising protest against the domination . . . by the
institutionalized Christian church. The majority of professed Christians . . .
are unwittingly actual secularists. Secularism . . . sells man into slavish
bondage to the totalitarian state . . . the tyranny of political and economic
slavery. Secularism
can never bring peace to mankind. Nothing can take the place of God in human society . . . Secularism simply ignores God. More
recently, secularism
has assumed a more militant attitude,
assuming to take the place of the religion whose totalitarian bondage it one
time resisted. But Beware: this
godless philosophy will lead only to unrest, animosity, unhappiness, war, and
worldwide disaster. Complete
secularization . . . can lead only
to disaster.
Christianity unwittingly seems
to sponsor a society, which staggers under the guilt of tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles, wealth without work,
pleasure without restraint, knowledge without character, power without
conscience, and industry without morality.
Selfish men and women simply
will not pay such a price for even the greatest spiritual treasure ever offered
mortal man. Only
when man has become sufficiently disillusioned by the sorrowful disappointment attendant upon the foolish and deceptive
pursuits of selfishness . . . will he be disposed to turn . . . to the religion
of Jesus of Nazareth. (Man is not yet so disillusioned)
Another world war (WWII) will
teach the so-called sovereign nations to form some sort of federation, thus
creating the machinery for preventing small wars . . .(but not large ones) An
international police force will prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars.
Worldwide confederations of nations . . . will not prevent world wars nor
control the three, four or five most powerful governments. (Is this applicable
to today?) Times of great testing and threatened defeat are always times of great revelation.
Shortly, we will be entering
this period of world crisis. Mankind’s latest Tower of Babel will narrow
allegiances of church, state, party, class, or race in moving toward a wider
vision of human potentiality. What more daring a goal for humankind than for
each person to become, in ideal as well as practice, a citizen of a world
community. It is a classical vision; we can now give it new vitality. Humanism
thus interpreted is a moral force that has time on its side. We believe that
humankind has the potential, intelligence, goodwill, and cooperative skill to
implement this commitment in the decades ahead."
This is the end of Humanist
Manifesto II. It proclaims the establishment of the brotherhood of humankind.
Unfortunately, they do not know that "you cannot establish the brotherhood of man without the
Fatherhood of God."
Simple, basic, veryday truth, unappreciated by the closed minds of man. Truth
is so very valuable because it can be lived successfully. Why have so few
found such wisdom? Can we find if we do not seek? Do we seek if we are not
thirsty for truth? Are we thirsty if we are still satisfied with our own
deceptions? Blessed are the meek, for they are not self-satisfied. They are
still open to the light of truth. We now return to our discussion of Urantia
Book prophecy and the world crisis to come. We should not become so caught up
in looking for the end of the age that we neglect to establish and maintain the
Kingdom of Heaven within. For the Master said:
Even you, Thomas, fail
to comprehend what I have been
saying. Have I not taught you that your connection with the
Kingdom of Heaven is spiritual and individual, wholly a matter
of personal experience in the spirit by the faith-realization that
you are a son of God? What more shall I say? The downfall
of nations, the crash of empires, the destruction of unbelieving
Jews, the end of an age, even the end of the world, what have
these things to do with one who believes this gospel and who
has led his life in the surety of the eternal kingdom?
As we look around today, these
same "sophistries
of unbridled personal liberty" are
all around us. The rebellion is ongoing and coming to full fruit at age’s end.
We see this in our youth, on our TV sets, in our government, in our marriages,
and in our academies. Power has replaced religion and politics has replaced
ethics. The time of trial approaches. Rebellion still has its last gasp to
breath.
The Devil is still here. What
"schemes" is he involved in? Can we find and recognize his activities
in the world today or are they so impotent that they do not even register on
the scales of human activity? What difference does their presence make in the
world around us? How would our planet, our nation, our lives be different
without their presence? There
are two mistakes that can be made with regard to evil. One is to be blind to it
and therefore become powerless to effectively overcome it. The second mistake
is to overly focus on and stress evil.
The above excerpts are from the book, "The Kingdom of Heaven is
at Hand", by Edmund J. Roache